Feral Druid Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.0.5)

Feral has the benefit of two solid Hero trees in Druid of the Claw and Wildstalker, both providing a fairly similar damage increase without significantly increasing the execution requirements. I would personally recommend playing with Wildstalker in raids, and Druid of the Claw for Mythic+.

Many Feral mechanics benefit from the Pandemic effect. This means that you can refresh them with up to 30% of the duration remaining, and they will be added to the new application (but snapshotting will not be carried over). This includes the following abilities at the following times:

• Rake — 4.5 seconds;
• Rip — 7.2 seconds (assuming 5 Combo Points);
• Thrash — 4.5 seconds;
• Moonfire — 4.8 seconds;

With the Circle of Life and Death talent these values are proportionally shorter:

• Rake — 3.4 seconds;
• Rip — 5.4 seconds (assuming 5 Combo Points);
• Thrash — 3.4 seconds;
• Moonfire — 3.6 seconds;

Any time remaining after the above thresholds will instead be added onto the maximum duration from the new cast and combined for an extended uptime. This allows you to refresh any time within this window, whenever is most suitable for you.

In virtually all situations, you should strive to have as close to 100% uptime on both Rip and Rake, and ideally also Thrash. With Lunar Inspiration, this also applies to Moonfire (even though it's not technically a Bleed).

Broadly speaking, Feral leans strongly toward Convoke the Spirits as it condenses a significant amount of damage down to a brief channel that can be overlapped with Berserk. Having a lot of the damage come all at once also gives Feral an edge in priority burst, so with both talents having relatively similar gains, the advantage is clearly in the favor of Convoke. Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane still provides a significant amplifier to your Berserk, but the requirement to stick to targets for the entire (extended) duration and the lower upfront damage makes it less universal as a tool. Convoke also has a solid follow-up, reducing the cooldown down to 1-minute, while Incarnation's bonus effect is extremely awkward to play around.

Yes. You should avoid wasting any Energy, the primary resource you will pool. Generally, you will begin to pool this at high Combo Points and start spending when you need to refresh an effect (though with Bloodtalons taken, you will do a pool-dump-pool cycle instead). The primary rule is to use resources wisely for Feral as that dictates your output at all times, and pooling is often a core part of that. Ideally, you should put yourself in a situation where you generate your Combo Points and wait on Energy before re-entering into another Spend-Generate-Pool cycle to minimize the chance of an Omen of Clarity proc being wasted. In The War Within, this is also significantly more important due to the slower nature of the spec and the Energy pacing being pulled back, so if you are too aggressive in spending you will often find you miss opportunities for key damage overlaps.

Yes. While there is some potential to overflow with Primal Fury, the resource economy generally favors always maxing out your Combo Points before committing to a finisher. With Coiled to Spring, some of this risk is also mitigated by the overflow protection buff it provides.

Saber Jaws puts extra emphasis on making sure you consume additional Energy with each Ferocious Bite to amplify the damage. This means you need to be more mindful of your Energy state when consuming Combo Points to make sure you capitalize on this rather than just sending it as soon as possible. It also means our Energy to damage conversion is higher with finishers, making pooling even more important in some cases to reset your cycle after a Bite. You should already be doing this, but it's made even more important. Note that Apex Predator's Craving has no interaction with this talent.

Snapshotting refers to mechanics involving Tiger's Fury and Bloodtalons, that will confer the damage increase to the entire Bleed DoT effect if these buffs are present when you apply them. This is specific to these two effects and does not apply to trinkets or active effects such as Sabertooth. This means maintaining Bleeds with these effects up is very important to make the most out of them, and ideally, you want to make sure Rake is buffed by Tiger's Fury, and Rip is buffed by both that and Bloodtalons if taken. You should also try to minimize the number of times you overwrite these effects without these buffs.

In The War Within, you should always aim to be using Primal Wrath to maintain Rip. Following that, excess resources should be spent on Ferocious Bite. In situations where cleaving is required, taking Rampant Ferocity to convert this to AoE damage is recommended. Aim to only cast Primal Wrath based on the Rip timer rather than refreshing it too early.

The answer to this question in any context will always be to simulate it. This is because what is an upgrade for you may not be an upgrade for someone else. In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer, even when talking about 2 completely identical comparisons from you to another person. Everything in your gear affects everything else.

This applies to gear, set bonuses, trinkets, and talents.

The only exception to this rule is when a specific fight dictates a certain set of optimal talents and gear pieces that enhance their strength. If you are curious about what kind of setup to go for a specific fight, WarcraftLogs.com's rankings and statistics are a good place to see what others are doing.

We have a guide on how to sim yourself here:

For Feral, there is no strict "amount" or breakpoint of any stat you must reach. Nor are there any points at which a stat stops being desirable. In most cases, the specific secondary you have is less important than the volume. However, this is another case in which a simulation to check your ideal gear pieces and stat values will provide you with invaluable information.

Druids have limited race options for each faction, but the current simulations for races indicate the following: